Pato da Destruição - Todas as Secções

Snif

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:52:22 +0100

Estava de faxina ao caldeirao dos figos e deixei aquilo agarrar no fundo.
A minha tribo vai ficar desiludida comigo.

Jailbreak PS3

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:00:39 +0100

http://ez.mygames.pt/ps3/noticia/jailbre...unal-13131

http://wp.clicrbs.com.br/canaldosgames/2...,2,18,,,77

http://kotaku.com/5457741/jailbreak-hack...the-public

http://gizmodo.com/5455326/father-of-jai...ystation-3

Alguém tinha conhecimento da existência disto?

7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:53:00 +0100

7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail

discuss

Telhados de prédios

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 21:10:34 +0100

Costumas a reparar nos telhados dos pre'dios? Se estao la', de que cor sao, quantas chamine's tem, etc...

Osmos

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:16:55 +0100

Boas

Achei este jogo OSMOS no outro dia e joguei um pouco, muito interessante. Simples mas muito interessante.

Uma palavra resume o jogo.. GRAVIDADE

Deixo o link para verem e lerem sobre o dito joguito.

Osmos

Infelizmente apenas pude jogar a demo. Que acabou bastante depressa.

Study: Generation X more loyal to religion

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 01:59:54 +0100

Generation X, the set of Americans who came of age in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is often branded as a rules-rejecting, authority-questioning group.

But when it comes to religion, new research has revealed that Gen-Xers are surprisingly loyal to their faith - a finding that also suggests the rising non-religious tide in the United States may be leveling off.

In a study published in the latest edition of The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologist Philip Schwadel showed that Gen-Xers are, in comparison with their Baby Boomer predecessors, far more likely to adhere to their religion. In fact, Boomers are 40 to 50 percent more likely than Gen-Xers to "disaffiliate" from their faith.

As Generation X continues to grow older, this loyalty may translate into a more stable nation in terms of its religiosity, he said.

Schwadel examined General Social Survey responses from more than 37,000 Americans from 1973 to 2006. Using age, period and cohort models, the research zoomed in on two aspects of U.S. religious behavior through the decades:

Non-affiliation, which is the total percentage of Americans not involved with any particular religion; and
Disaffiliation, which measures those who had a religious affiliation while they were adolescents but then had no affiliation at the time they were surveyed.

"The proportion of Americans with no religious affiliation doubled in the 1990s and has continued to rise in the 21st century," Schwadel said. "With the decline in religious disaffiliation among post-Boomer cohorts, it is possible that this growth in non-affiliation may soon level off."
Though Generation X's religious adherents are relatively durable, the generation as a whole is still more likely than previous ones to be raised with no religious preference, according to the research. Religious non-affiliation in the United States grew from between 6 percent and 8 percent in the 1970s and 1980s to nearly 16 percent by 2006.

Like previous researchers, Schwadel attributes this to the so-called "1960s effect" -- Americans who were children and young adults in the 1960s were disproportionately likely to disaffiliate with religion compared with previous generations. Consequently, many Boomers raised their Gen-X children in a non-religious environment.

Schwadel's research, however, shows that Gen-Xers are behaving differently than their parents. Although Gen-Xers are relatively likely to be raised with no religious affiliation, those who are raised with a religious affiliation are considerably less likely than their parents to separate from religion.

So why are religious members of Gen-X so much less likely to leave religion? For one, Schwadel said, the American religious scene is more dynamic and textured than it was when Baby Boomers were coming of age in the '60s and '70s, which has left the younger generation more choices. If they aren't happy with a particular religion, they can more easily find a substitute instead of falling away entirely.

"Social scientists have noted that what we call the 'religious marketplace' has greatly expanded in recent decades," Schwadel said. "Historically, it was thought that this religious pluralism was detrimental to the vitality of American religion. While many still hold this view, others suggest that more choices lead to greater religious affiliation and commitment."
The long-term impact of the decline in disaffiliation among post-Boomers remains to be seen, he said.

"While this trend is good news for those who worry about declining religious adherence, the Boomers' enmity toward organized religion is still evident in the relatively large proportion of their children and grandchildren who are raised with no religious affiliation," Schwadel said.

Japan develops 'touchable' 3D TV technology

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 01:48:12 +0100

Children watch the giant image of a whale shark on a huge screen in Tokyo. A Japanese research team has said Thursday it had developed the world's first 3D television system that allows users to touch, pinch or poke images floating in front of them.

A Japanese research team said Thursday it had developed the world's first 3D television system that allows users to touch, pinch or poke images floating in front of them.

"It is the first time that you can feel images in the air," said Norio Nakamura, senior scientist with the research team at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.

"You can have the sense of touch like poking a rubber ball or stretching a sticky rice cake" when manipulating images, he told AFP by telephone.
The technology changes the shape of three-dimensional images in response to "touches", aided by cameras that monitor how the fingers move, Nakamura said.

It is not known when the technology will be put to practical use but its creators see it being used to simulate surgical operations and in video game software allowing players to experience the sensation of holding weapons or sports equipment.

It could even use scanned images to supplement existing realities, said Nakamura.

"This technology could create a virtual museum where visitors, including vision-impaired people, can put their hands on valuable sculptures that are usually untouchable," Nakamura said.

Ikariam

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:34:27 +0100

Alguns de voces ja' sabem, eu jogo Ikariam.
Pois bem, hoje, depois de mais de 1 ano () cheguei a nu'mero 1 no meu servidor!

Que opção e' que vais escolher nesta votação?

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:22:31 +0100

Que opção e' que vais escolher nesta votação?

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 20:21:38 +0100

Fe'rias...

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:21:16 +0100

Se estao a pensar em me oferecer um pacote de fe'rias este Natal eu deixo aqui a sugestao:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/fea...rwear.html

Primeiro!

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 18:23:13 +0100

Ah!

Filmes e porn!

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 00:07:12 +0100

Clerks:

Zach and Miri Make A Porno:

The Thanos Imperative

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 13:08:05 +0100

In the cosmic corner of the Marvel Universe, one thing leads to another, usually in the most dangerous of ways. The most recent string of events began several years ago when the inter-dimensional despot Annihilus led an invasion from the Negative Zone. It was a conflict that came to be known as the first "Annihilation War" and it utterly decimated many of the Marvel U's intergalactic races. While the galaxy was trying to clean up the wreckage from the first Annihilation War, the techno organic beings known as the Phalanx launched a sneak attack as detailed in the "Annihilation: Conquest" storyline.

In the wake of "Annihilation: Conquest," a number of Marvel's cosmic champions like Nova, Star-Lord and his group the Guardians of the Galaxy became concerned about how these galactic wars were affecting the stability of their universe, working hard to prevent any more conflagrations from breaking out. Unfortunately, thanks to the machinations of the Skrull Empire, they failed. As part of their "Secret Invasion" of Earth, the Skrulls attacked the Inhumans in their home on Earth's moon, causing the isolationist Inhumans to respond by becoming aggressively proactive in intergalactic affairs, attacking and conquering their old enemies, the Kree empire. After that, the Inhuman-Kree Empire was attacked by another galactic great power, the Shi'Ar Imperium. This conflict was detailed in "War of Kings," and its climax saw the Guardians of the Galaxy's worst nightmares come true as a hole in time and space was ripped open. This hole was dubbed The Fault and readers soon learned that on the other side is another universe, where life has run amok.

In the current "Realm of Kings" event, the cosmic champions of the Marvel U are exploring that other universe and have discovered that it is home to sinister and powerful entities; entities which have filled their universe with unchecked growth and now crave domination over ours. Waiting to ally with them in our universe is Adam Magus, the villainous doppelganger of Adam Warlock, who is head of the heavily armed Universal Church of Truth. It's a desperate time for the heroes of Marvel Comics, and this spring, desperate measures will be implemented as Magus' deceased arch enemy, Thanos, is resurrected in the hope of using him in the coming battle against Magus and his extra-dimensional allies.

The next cosmic event launches in the one-shot "Thanos Imperative: Ignition" by writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning and artist Brad Walker ("Guardians of the Galaxy"). Events escalate in June with the launch of the six -issue " The Thanos Imperative" miniseries by Abnett and Lanning and artist Miguel Sepulveda ("Thunderbolts"). CBR News spoke with the writers, who are collectively known to their fans as DnA, and editor Bill Rosemann about the project.

Story continues below
CBR News: You're laying the final groundwork for "The Thanos Imperative" in the "Realm of Kings" storyline that's currently running through the "Nova" and "Guardians of the Galaxy" ongoings and the two miniseries: "Realm of Kings: Imperial Guard" and "Realm of Kings: Inhumans." Do events in all of these books set "The Thanos Imperative" into motion, or are certain books more important than others?

Dan Abnett: Everything thing points to " The Thanos Imperative: Ignition" one-shot, which is a singular event that will gather in threads from "Guardians," "Nova," "Inhumans," "Imperial Guard" and the "Realm of Kings" one-shot, which seemed like a fun, self-contained thing at the time and now has greater and greater significance as we run into this event.

Thanos returns in "The Thanos Imperative: Ignition"
Andy Lanning: We've built upon all these cool little things that we've been dropping into the books over the past couple of years. "Nova," "Guardians," "War of Kings" and the "Realm of Kings" stuff have all had these little hanging threads that we've picked up and woven into this greater story. Of course, if you look behind the curtain, things weren't so ingrained from the get go [Laughs]. There was a certain amount of throwing things out there because they were cool and intriguing and that's part of the fun of doing something like this.

You've got this great stuff and if you get an idea or a direction, you really turn it up based on the direction the story ends up taking. So this is where it's all kind of lead up to. In "Realm of Kings," we're dealing with the Cthulhu-verse - or Cancer-verse - a universe where life has run rampant. And now the inhabitants of that universe are coming into our universe, where death and entropy are the ruling aspects. There's a collision course happening. We looked for the biggest advocate of death we could find, and that's Thanos and that made it his story. Hence the title, "The Thanos Imperative."

So "The Thanos Imperative" is not only a natural direction for the overall story you're telling, but it's also a way for you guys to fulfill a desire to write Thanos, who died back in the first "Annihilation" storyline?

DA: We wanted to bring Thanos back, mainly because he's an enormously compelling character to write about. He's a big favorite of ours. Anybody who loves Marvel Cosmic like we do can't fail to love Thanos for everything he represents. He's a great looking, marvelously interesting and complicated character who has featured in some great cosmic stories.

So right from the word go, we wanted to do a Thanos story. However, we started working on the cosmic books around the time of "Annihilation" with Nova, and at that point Keith Giffen was busy writing a brilliant death for Thanos. So we didn't want to bring him back willy nilly. We didn't want to just plop him back out again, because it felt like it would be short changing the readers and spoiling Keith's story. However, Thanos is a comic book character, and we knew that he would come back eventually. So our plan was that we would do a Thanos story, but we would hold off on doing it. We would build up to it. It would be a slow burn thing - a sort of holy grail that we would work to over a period of time.

The storylines that have taken us to our Thanos tale have evolved over time. We've been very good at thinking on our feet and moving things about. So that was our plan. We wanted to bring him back because he was very interesting, but we didn't want to just rush into it. So I think his return is a big punctuation point, a big, decisive moment. It's not just that he's back, but he's back at the right moment. That's really what we wanted to do. It's a story that pays off a lot of the stuff that we've been doing for three years. Not just because we've been moving towards it, but because we've been moving everything together

AL: Picking up from what Dan said, Thanos is one of the tentpole cosmic characters in the Marvel Universe, and to have an opportunity to bring him back to life is actually brilliant. Having him die right as Dan and I took over was a bit of a drawback, but that also gave us story potential, because if you're going to bring a character back, you want to A) leave a decent amount of time for their death to have some sort of meaning, and B) bring them back in a creative way that comes out of a story rather than someone pointing their fingers and, lo and behold: Thanos is back as a cool gimmick or a sales point.

From day one of "Guardians," we've been dealing with these strange creatures from another universe, and now two years down the line we've sort of polished that idea into the Cancer-verse. So that sets up a proper opportunity for us to bring Thanos back within a story that makes sense, and to weave a massive event around.

We've only really seen Thanos a few times since his death, and it looked like he was at peace since he was standing side-by-side with his lover, the Marvel U's physical embodiment of Death. What's his mental state like upon his revival in "The Thanos Imperative?"

AL: I think one word can describe his personality, and that's pissed!

DA: Andy is right. One of the things we wanted to make sure we didn't do with Thanos was bring him back and have him rehearse again all the things we've seen him do before. We were trying to think of things that we could do with him that would be significantly different so it wasn't just the same old Thanos. Although he's capable of enormous violence and has superhuman strength, Thanos often seems to be a great master plotter who sits there and thinks up these plans of enormous conspiratorial intrigue. So in this, when we first bring him back, you’ll see he's frighteningly dangerous for different reasons.

After "Ignition," "The Thanos Imperative" gets underway in April
AL: Like Dan said, Thanos is normally the master plotter, so what we thought might be another interesting way to use the character in our story is that he's been brought back as part of somebody else's plan, which is obviously a very dangerous game to play. You don't uncork a genie in the bottle like Thanos and then hope to have him dance to your tune.

Who are some of the other central characters that we'll be seeing in "The Thanos Imperative?"

DA: At the beginning of this story there are two particular camps, and Thanos is slammed down in the middle of everything. On the one side you've got Adam Magus, who is just as potent of a villain [as Thanos]. Some of the great Jim Starlin stories of old have been Thanos versus Magus. There's no doubt in anybody's mind that Magus can go toe-to-toe with Thanos, and we've had great fun with him. He's a fantastic character. So he's there with the Universal Church of Truth; an ecclesiastical empire that stretches across the stars. Plus, there is whatever it is that is lurking on the other side of the Fault, which we're going to reveal more about as we go into the story. They're facing off against basically all our good guys.

Our key characters are going to be Nova and Star-Lord, who will have the Guardians with him. We're going to focus on Nova and Star-Lord particularly, though, because we've been following their adventures since "Annihilation." They're two war buddies who have been through these wars together and have a slightly different take on the way things work. Nova, in particular, in the last few years has really accelerated into the premier division of cosmic superheroes. He's got the power and the experience, whereas Star-Lord is still this sort of comparatively low-powered maverick. He's got the wisdom and the experience, but he has to sort of look to others for the serious cosmic clout.

This story also brings in as co-stars some of the cosmic big guns that we haven't written much about before, like Quasar and the Silver Surfer. This is probably our biggest story, because it requires some of the biggest characters around to get involved. And as such, we're not leaving behind any of the threads that we set up in the other "Realm of Kings" books.

What can you tell us about the overall plot and themes of "The Thanos Imperative?" Is this a war story in the vein of "War of Kings," or should readers be expecting a different type of tale?

AL: In the "Realm of Kings" one-shot, we showed how the Cancer-verse is now linked to our universe via The Fault. The inhabitants of the Cancer-Verse filled their own universe up, and now they're spilling out into our universe like a sucking chest wound. So in that respect, it's like an invasion story where we've got all of the factions on our side of the universe united by Medusa and Gladiator. Their stories in "Realm of Kings" have given them warnings of this impending invasion, and they've created a defensive line to repel these invaders.

We're trying to do what was done with "Annihilation" and "Annihilation: Conquest," where you set personal stories against the backdrop of some huge cosmic event and you follow these individuals and their struggles. You concentrate on how a small team can make a big difference in a larger scale conflict.

DA: There's also no particular telling which way Thanos will go, as it were. Just because he has a long association with Death it doesn't mean that he'll thematically side against life. As we said, he's coming into this story incredibly angry and probably very vengeful. He might just want to get his own back. It's very likely that he'll turn on the Marvel Universe and the characters in it simply to satisfy his lust to get his own back. Of course, there's a more archetypical opponent for him spilling through The Fault. So, as ever, he's as dangerous as can be.

How is the overall story of "The Thanos Imperative" structured? Will this just be a story that unfolds in the miniseries? Or will it also flow into the "Nova" and "Guardians of the Galaxy" ongoings?

Bill Rosemann: Both "Nova" and "Guardians of the Galaxy" will both be going on hiatus in April, with all the action zooming right into "The Thanos Imperative: Ignition" in May, and then the six-issue saga in June. DnA are the masters at crafting stories that both build upon years of character development and also stand on their own - providing you all the "101" info you need to enjoy the adventure. So all you cash-strapped readers rejoice - whether you've read "Annihilation," "Conquest," "War of Kings," "Nova" and "Guardians of the Galaxy" - or whether you're just a fan who digs characters like Thanos and Surfer - you can just pick up "The Thanos Imperative" and enjoy a self-contained, satisfying, galaxy-rocking adventure.

Over the course of your various cosmic epics, you've worked with different artists on wide range of types of stories. What was it about Miguel Sepulveda that made him the right artist for "The Thanos Imperative?"

BR: Month after month, Miguel has been impressing readers of "Thunderbolts" by delivering his unique brand of dynamic action, gritty realism and breath-taking environments. All of those elements will be on display in "The Thanos Imperative," and I hope a host of new readers discover and enjoy the amazing art of this rapidly rising star.

DA: We're really looking forward to seeing him get to work. The decision to offer him the assignment was made not just on the basis that he was very talented, but his style has a gritty, dark look and we thought that was preferable for this story.

Dan and Andy, as you said "The Thanos Imperative" is probably the biggest Marvel Cosmic story that you guys have ever told in terms of scope and stakes, which may leave some readers wondering what comes next? How will you top a story as ambitious as this?

DA: You can always go "one louder," and that doesn't necessarily mean "one more dramatic." There are many different types of stories we can tell. I was thinking about this today. The last sort of event story we did for the cosmic books was "War of Kings," and while that was huge, compared to "Annihilation" it was smaller. It was two great cultures at war rather than an inter-dimensional invasion. The scope was still vast, but not quite as vast. You can go into different levels, and "War of Kings" is more about the intrigue of two great royal lines going head to head. So they both have enormous scopes, but they're different kinds of stories, all of which have that cosmic "wow" factor. They just work on different levels of magnitude. And the "The Thanos Imperative" will have the greatest amount of magnitude that we've attempted yet.

AL: We're playing with the collisions of two universes here. It's pretty large. And to follow up on what Dan said, the Marvel Cosmic Universe is filled with such interesting characters, and we've had such fun over the last three years playing with all of these supposed B and C list characters; dusting them off for people to see. People have seemed to pick up on that. Just looking at all the different alien races, cultures and cosmic entities that are hopping around, we can keep going and going. We don't have to look far for potential story inspirations.

DA: We've had such great response with the cosmic readership - you couldn't possibly imagine a more loyal bunch of readers. It's been a real pleasure, so far, writing stories that seem to get them excited. I have great faith that this story will, and I hope that this story not only serves as the next episode in an exciting story for them, but they also really relish the sense of payoff on storylines that they may not even have been aware were out there smoldering in the background and are now suddenly flaring up to come together in this big thing. You seldom get a chance to do these kinds of story payoffs with a comic, and that's really a thing to be relished.

AL: I think Marvel has really given us a great opportunity to play with these toys. We have some fun with our favorite characters. We're huge fans of Jim Starlin, who created many of these characters. We're huge Keith Giffen fans and we're huge Marvel Cosmic fans. So to have a chance to write these characters for the period of time that we have, and have the fun that we have had, has just been brilliant. I think people who are fans of the cosmic stuff will see the parallels and get the in-jokes. New readers we'll see it at as a different type of story than your average earthbound tale, and hopefully they'll get to see how cool some of these cosmic characters, who they might not normally read about, really are.

A pílula torna as mulheres mais inteligentes

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 01:50:51 +0100

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/tak...5907021337

é o que dizem as más línguas

Captura de pombos em Espanha

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:57:13 +0100

Acho que ja' devi'amos ter comecado a fazer isto aqui em Portugal.

Precisa-se: mais testes :)

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:15:16 +0100

Agora que esta coisa está mais ou menos pronta, gostava de aproveitar o trabalho feito para criar mais testes, a alojar no mesmo domínio (tests.dehumanizer.com). Estou neste momento sem grandes ideias, mas, se quiserem ajudar... Só preciso que sejam "interessantes" (sim, eu sei que o termo é subjectivo).

"Enunciado":

1- Do meu lado, só preciso de um ficheiro de texto normal, daqueles que se fazem com o Notepad (e não Word ou coisas parecidas). Podem até usar a função "inserir código PHP" aqui do fórum (a função "inserir código formatado", por alguma razão, remove os espaços do início das linhas), em vez de estar a criar e enviar ficheiros.

2- A formatação é simples: um ponto por linha. Se um ponto é dependente do anterior, põe-se um espaço no início. Se é dependente de um ponto desses, põe-se mais um espaço, e assim por diante. O limite são 3 espaços.

Por exemplo:

Código PHP:

Gostas de futebol
 e vês frequentemente jogos na TV
 e és do Benfica
 e não segues mais nenhum desporto
 e lês um ou mais jornais desportivos
  e não lês nenhum outro jornal
 e achas que os árbitros são todos corruptos
 e tens no carro um cachecol / bandeira do teu clube
  bem visível de fora
Férias, para ti, são na praia 

É fácil, com isto, perceber a hierarquia e as dependências.

3- os testes têm de ser tipo "quão X és", ou "és um bom X", ou "és um grande fã de X". É uma lista (com dependências) de pontos, e o utilizador escolhe os que se aplicam. Só isso. Não é possível (neste formato) ter respostas "certas" ou "erradas"; o teste simplesmente faz a soma das preenchidas (tendo atenção às dependências), e dá a percentagem. Cada ponto vale exactamente o mesmo.

Da mesma forma, testes de conhecimento não funcionam muito bem aqui, já que a única forma seria dar as respostas todas (ex. "sabes que X. Sabes fazer Y. Sabes como funciona Z."). Mais uma vez, não há conceito de respostas "certas" ou "erradas".

4- é, claro, possível fazer um teste inteiro sem dependências / hierarquias, mas elas são muito úteis para impedir mal-entendidos (além de que, acho eu, torna o teste mais agradável, porque fica mais como se fosse uma conversa; vejam como o exemplo acima se lê bem). Por exemplo:

Código PHP:

És católico
 não-praticante 

A minha ideia aqui foi que os portugueses são quase todos católicos, e desses quase todos são não-praticantes. Mas se a segunda linha não fosse uma dependência da primeira, os utilizadores poderiam pensar que "não-praticante", neste contexto, inclui ateus ou crentes de outras religiões, e preencheriam só essa linha, contando um ponto... ponto esse que não é ali desejado (já que o português típico não é ateu nem crente de outras religiões).

5- pode ser em português ou inglês.

Algumas ideias:

- és um benfiquista a sério? (ou outro título; eu evitaria o "quão", já que é uma palavra complicada ) (teria coisas como "já gastaste centenas de contos para baixar o número de sócio" )
- és um fanático do Twilight? (ex. já viste cada filme mais do que 20 vezes, sabes os diálogos todos, tens pósteres no quarto, etc.) -- este, imagino, seria muito popular entre certo tipo de público.
- estarias preparado para um ataque de zombies? (seria uma lista de skills, defesas na casa, armas (ou objectos usáveis como arma) e afins; imagino que só "survivalists" americanos teriam pontuações vagamente aceitáveis)

Acho que certa pessoa aqui podia, nuns minutos, fazer o do Benfica. Eu posso tratar do dos zombies, talvez hoje ou amanhã. Mas estejam à vontade para fazer testes (interessantes) que eu não tenha mencionado... depois podem exibi-los no Facebook e dizer "fui eu que fiz!" (excepto a parte técnica, claro).

Viajar no tempo... e paradoxos - Regresso ao futuro alguem?

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:58:37 +0100

Time travel theory avoids grandfather paradox

This figure shows CTCs through (a) conventional and (b) post-selected teleportation.

The possibility of going back in time only to kill your ancestors and prevent your own birth has posed a serious problem for potential time travelers, not even considering the technical details of building a time machine. But a new theory proposed by physicists at MIT suggests that this grandfather paradox could be avoided by using quantum teleportation and "post-selecting" what a time traveler could and could not do. So while murdering one’s relatives is unfortunately possible in the present time, such actions would be strictly forbidden if you were to try them during a trip to the past.

The model of time travel proposed by Seth Lloyd, et al., in a recent paper at arXiv.org arises from their investigation of the quantum mechanics of closed timelike curves (CTCs) and search for a theory of gravity. In simple terms, a CTC is a path of spacetime that returns to its starting point. The existence of CTCs is allowed by Einstein’s general relativity, although it was Gödel who first discovered them. As with other implications of his theories, Einstein was a bit disturbed by CTCs.

In the new paper, the scientists explore a particular version of CTCs based on combining quantum teleportation with post-selection, resulting in a theory of post-selected CTCs (P-CTCs). In quantum teleportation, quantum states are entangled so that one state can be transmitted to the other in a different location. The scientists then applied the concept of post-selection, which is the ability to make a computation automatically accept only certain results and disregard others. In this way, post-selection could ensure that only a certain type of state can be teleported. The states that “qualify” to be teleported are those that have been post-selected to be self-consistent prior to being teleported. Only after it has been identified and approved can the state be teleported, so that, in effect, the state is traveling back in time. Under these conditions, time travel could only occur in a self-consistent, non-paradoxical way.

“The formalism of P-CTCs shows that such quantum time travel can be thought of as a kind of quantum tunneling backwards in time, which can take place even in the absence of a classical path from future to past,” the researchers write in their paper. “Because the theory of P-CTCs relies on post-selection, it provides self-consistent resolutions to such paradoxes: anything that happens in a P-CTC can also happen in conventional quantum mechanics with some probability.”

However, the scientists note that prohibiting paradoxical events would cause unlikely events to happen more often. These “strange and counterintuitive effects” arise due to the nonlinear nature of P-CTCs. Like a movie hero who always manages to escape seemingly imminent death, the grandfather would always somehow manage to survive his grandchild’s murderous plots. “Some little quantum fluctuation would whisk the bullet away at the last moment,” Lloyd explained.

In addition to prohibiting the grandfather paradox, the P-CTC theory also has the advantage that it doesn’t require the distortions of spacetime that traditional time travel theories rely on. These spacetime distortions probably only exist in extreme environments such as inside black holes, making these theories nearly impossible to realize.

Although post-selected computations are nonlinear and have not yet been shown to be possible, some studies have shown that quantum mechanics may be nonlinear and allow post-selected computations, which would potentially make quantum computing a very powerful technique.

Such a computer could more efficiently solve a complex problem containing lots of variables by running all possible combinations of values and post-selecting only the combinations that solve the problem. This strategy would work much better than the classical strategy of trying different combinations until you get one that works. On the other hand, other studies suggest that quantum mechanics must be linear, in part due to the seemingly impossible things that post-selection allows.

Still, the scientists hope that future investigations will reveal whether or not their theory is correct. They explain that the effect of P-CTCs can be tested by performing quantum teleportation experiments, and by post-selecting only the results that correspond to the desired entangled-state output.

“P-CTCs might also allow time travel in spacetimes without general-relativistic closed timelike curves,” they conclude. “If nature somehow provides the nonlinear dynamics afforded by final-state projection, then it is possible for particles (and, in principle, people) to tunnel from the future to the past.”

‘Homem de Ferro’ faz mal às crianças

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:35:22 +0100

Maus exemplos. É assim que um estudo, apresentado na 118ª Convenção Anual da Associação Americana de Psicologia, classifica os super-heróis do cinema para as crianças, em particular o ‘Homem de Ferro’, vivido na sétima arte por Robert Downey Jr.

Ao contrário dos tempos áureos da banda desenhada, a professora da Universidade de Massachusetts-Boston, Sharon Lamb, explicou que os super-heróis já não surgem como pessoas reais, com vulnerabilidades. Citada pela 'BBC', a especialista esclareceu que a imagem do super-herói que bate em vilões não é boa quando se quer promover modelos masculinos mais gentis.

“Esses homens, como o ‘Homem de Ferro’, exploram as mulheres, exibem jóias e demonstram a masculinidade com armas poderosas”, referiu.

Após uma pesquisa junto de 674 crianças, entre os quatro e os 18 anos, a responsável concluiu que é disponibilizada aos mais jovens “uma versão limitada de masculinidade”.

“Os heróis de hoje participam de acções ininterruptas de violência”, concluiu Sharon Lamb. Por isso, a especialista defende que a solução está em ensinar os jovens a distanciarem-se dessas imagens e a encorajá-los a tentarem descobrir o que está errado na sua composição.

Que baboseiras

Rod Stewart - "Sailing"

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:25:02 +0100

Quem é que nunca mais conseguiu ouvir esta música:

sem se lembrar disto?